The European Union

Many theorists and policymakers may be surprised to learn that an international organization, such as the European Union, has the capacity to form and articulate its own grand strategy. However, identifying “who” makes EU grand strategy is challenging. A range of institutions and actors play a role in the formulation, consolidation, and execution of the EU’s grand strategy. These institutions, together with EU member states, define “grand strategy” in differing ways. Furthermore, some actors are more conscious than others that they are actually engaged in “grand strategy”–making rather than simply debating policies. This chapter identifies the leading actors in EU grand strategy; why and how these actors pursue grand strategy goals using a variety of instruments; discusses what those goals have been; and the prospects for their attainment.

Saudi Arabia

This chapter evaluates the formulation, implementation, and consistency of Saudi Arabia’s grand strategy since 1979. It examines how internal and regional factors influenced that strategy through the optic of a series of critical regional turning points, often overlain by shifting US debates on the Kingdom’s regional role. The chapter delineates why Saudi elites prioritize certain long-term objectives, how they perceive threats, and why they respond in specific ways. Its guiding conceptual framework is informed by four elements: the Kingdom’s dominant strategic culture, its political system, perception of national security, and regional alliance formations. The chapter demonstrates how the current Saudi establishment’s ability to sustain a grand strategy—primarily a regional role—is closely linked to its economic power, financial solvency, and internal stability.

India

This chapter maps the historic foundations of Indian grand strategy and the obstacles that have precluded the realization of a new one. First, it describes the elements of Nehru’s grand strategy, and the ways and means that India adopted to pursue them. Second, it examines the factors that have galvanized debates about discarding these Nehruvian commitments. Third, it describes the various contemporary, contending schools of thought about what India’s grand strategy should be. Fourth, it explores the various bureaucratic and political obstacles to transitioning away from this Nehruvian past. The fifth section argues that what has resulted is a form of incrementalism that has nonetheless precipitated important changes in India’s political, diplomatic, and military behavior away from these past Nehruvian commitments. The chapter concludes on a skeptical note by questioning whether the contemporary Indian administration will be able to craft a coherent grand strategy, given the vociferous nature of India’s democracy and decentralized political structure.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter is divided into five sections. The first section considers several methodological challenges that complicate the mission of comparative GS analysis and, consequently, probes the limits of this exercise. The next three sections examine the aggregate insights of the volume regarding: (1) the sources of GS in the states examined in the volume; (2) the range of goals that states pursue with their GSs; and (3) the tools that states use to promote their geostrategic goals. The final section evaluates additional insights suggested by this comparative exercise and explore avenues for inquiry.

Iran

This chapter argues that Iran’s grand strategy has and is torn between three tensions: the prioritization of an Islamic identity versus attaining economic prosperity the use of an offensive or defensive military strategy and its self-conception as a revolutionary or “normal” state. Historically Iran has striven to reconcile these inherently ambivalent goals through the “principle of equilibrium” (tavãzon). This chapter demonstrates how tavãzon shapes Iran’s grand strategy. While these countervailing forces do account for some continuity in Iran’s strategy over time they can conversely result in abrupt changes in response to systemic shifts. Iran’s current strategic imperative is thus driven by three factors: the jostling internal power struggle between factions the economic imperatives chastened by sanctions and most proximately its hostile relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel. In this context Iranian policy elites have consolidated around a military strategy of asymmetric deterrence.

China

Scholars still debate the very notion of a Chinese grand strategy. Nonetheless, recent leadership and policy statements, and their explicit linkage to historical patterns of Chinese behavior, suggest that China may well have the most forthright example of a grand strategy of any major power today. This chapter is composed of five parts in substantiating that claim. First, it survey’s Xi’s contemporary grand strategy. Second, it discusses the historical foundations of Xi’s initiatives. Third, it lists the modern factors that shape and complicate China’s grand strategic efforts. Fourth, it examines the two major contemporary prongs that link the global to the national strategy: the external Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aimed at binding Eurasia to China through infrastructure and commercial development; and the internal efforts to consolidate societal stability with a stronger surveillance state. Together, the chapter argues, these initiatives are designed to mitigate the impact of demographic decline and an S-curved slowdown in the growth of China’s economy, with the goal of buttressing other elements of national power to facilitate China’s re-emergence.

Russia

This chapter argues that Russia’s current leadership has consistently promoted a grand strategy that is fundamentally defensive in nature and offensive in practice. It has prioritized security and the quest for recognition in assuming that Russia’s status has been purposely diminished, and that the strategic environment poses a tangible threat to both Russian national interests and the regime’s survival. The institutional setting and strategic culture play a crucial role in the formulation of a strategic security agenda. Although defensive in character and reactive in nature, Russian strategies have embraced bold, proactive, and transformational agendas that have extended beyond military activity. New ways and means have been developed to heighten Russia’s security, assert regional dominance, and attain global recognition. Russia’s leadership not only resorts to military interventions and hybrid warfare and to strategic deterrence and intimidation, but also to comprehensive influence and political destabilization, while using military rhetoric and victories to conceal its domestic shortcomings.

Israel

A traditional approach views grand strategy as primarily concerned with a state’s external affairs: consolidating national security by employing a combination of state capabilities that utilize economic, diplomatic, and military power instruments. Israel’s founders, in contrast, stressed the importance of internal factors such as legitimacy, social cohesion, and economic disparity as essential conditions for national survival. Bearing these benchmark features in mind, Israel’s varied, enduring challenges continue to raise the dilemma of what constitutes both the theoretical and practical boundaries of the country’s grand strategy. Indeed, an examination of the country’s strategic blueprint reveals a constant ambivalence—between focusing on domestic issues and the urgent need to respond to security and diplomatic challenges. The continuous definition and redefinition of what comprises grand strategy reflect the various forces in play in shaping the country’s strategic choices, in the context of an environment where these three founding considerations are continually challenged.

Brazil

After the civil-military dictatorship (1964–1985), the Brazilian re-democratization process coincided with a “double divorce.” The first was between foreign policy and defense policy, the second between military and civilian authorities. It was only in the aftermath of the inauguration of the 1988 Constitution that the Brazilian federal government began constructing a bridge between these two public policies, their respective administrations, and attendant constituencies under the aegis of a democratic regime. Cardoso’s government began implementing a strategy aimed at placing the armed forces under civilian control. But it was during Lula’s and Rousseff’s subsequent administration’s that they laid out a “sketch of Brazil’s grand strategy,” interrupted by Rousseff’s 2016 controversial impeachment.Â?In this context, we analyze the main challenges concerning the conception and the implementation of Brazil’s grand strategy between 2003 and 2014, thus demonstrating how Brazil’s domestic politics and its development model together played key roles in this process.

United Kingdom

Great Britain has been influenced strongly by its history, and its grand strategy is shaped by both this legacy and by shifting geopolitics. Nevertheless, it has adapted to these forces, adjusted to its post-imperial posture, and remains an influential, nuclear-armed global power. While Great Britain promotes multilateralism and collective security, and is staunch in its alignment to the United States, it is—as Brexit demonstrates—less certain with regard to its relationship with Europe. It is a firm advocate of NATO, but—harking back to the nineteenth nentury—seeks to avoid the dominance of the continent by any single country. This chapter addresses the tension in the GB’s grand strategy through the legacy of its history, its close alliance with the United States, and the influence of domestic politics on key strategic choices. It also addresses the proactive British approach to the Global War on Terror, and the constraints that now impose themselves in the early decades of the twenty-first century.